In my house, bedtime story time means squishing into my daughter鈥檚 bed and reading aloud until one of us (usually me) passes out. It鈥檚 lovely literacy-enriched cuddle time. But no one ever taught me how to do it the right way.
That鈥檚 because until recently there鈥檚 been very little evidence that there is a right way to read bedtime stories. Before,聽the experts mostly implored parents: READ TO YOUR CHILD. Just spend 20 minutes. That鈥檚 all!
Johnny can’t read and neither can his classmates
Many聽parents dutifully follow these vague directions — maybe not as much as they are supposed to — but research suggests that parents do read aloud regularly to their young children. And many kids learn to read聽despite聽this less-than-scientific approach. But a huge number don鈥檛. According to a , only 32 percent聽of fourth graders are proficient in reading.聽That鈥檚 a devastating statistic if there ever was one.
Secret to teaching reading revealed!
There’s a laundry list of social ills contributing to why American children struggle to learn even basic skills — especially given the disproven method used across the country for years despite what the science of learning to read tells us — and it’s hard to think ivory tower educational research can be their savior. 聽Still, I was excited to hear about new findings from a 聽that uncovered a simple tip to help turn on kid鈥檚 reading brains.
Pointing out the obvious while reading bedtime stories
The research,聽,聽found that using 鈥減rint references鈥� (i.e. physically pointing out obvious things like 鈥淪ee how the beginning of dog starts with the d sound?鈥� and 鈥淟ook how I鈥檓 reading from left to right.鈥�) during reading time makes a huge difference in how well kids learn to聽read. Studies聽by the same researchers have shown that untrained teachers reference print聽in this way聽about 8.5 times a reading session compared to trained teachers who do it about 36 times.聽We parents only do it about once. (Until now, of course.)
The study divided 300 academically at-risk preschoolers into three kinds of classrooms聽for a 30-week reading program.聽In one group, teachers trained to use print references read aloud four times a week. In the second group, similarly trained teachers read aloud only two times a week, and in聽the聽control group, teachers read to their classes as they normally did four times a week.
This reading tip improves reading comprehension, too?!
After one and two years,聽the children who had been taught by teachers who read four times a week with print references were not only better at word reading and spelling, but here鈥檚 the weird thing:聽they had better reading comprehension,聽too! (Even the researchers seemed confounded by this.) Even the children who only got two days a week of print-referenced reading had slightly better skills than the children in the control group.
This study seems so strange — could such a little shift change children’s聽reading horizons so easily? It reminds me how reading must start out as a completely baffling enterprise, a kind of magic haze that kids can spend years wandering in before they find a path. With those 100 billion neurons making connections at the speed of light, scaling a vast mountain of meaning and facts and skills, their brains need a foothold, and the more footholds you give them, the more progress they can make, letter by letter, word by word.
